A Surprise Hearing

And some very surprising testimony

Today was exhausting. I don’t know about y’all, but I feel like I’ve been through a battle, when all I was doing was sitting around, watching TV.

Before I sign off for the night, a couple of observations about today’s surprise hearing with witness Cassidy Hutchinson, a 25-year-old top aide to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows. Meadows, you’ll recall, refused to testify before the January 6 committee, was held in contempt, and DOJ declined to prosecute. A few observations, and then we all need a good night’s sleep!

How do we understand today’s hearing?

I think that rather than jumping straight to concerns about whether today’s hearing makes prosecution by DOJ more or less likely, we should take some time to absorb the facts. Forget about prosecution or admissible evidence. My God. How was this man ever the president? He was impulsive and craven and mean and violent. If it wasn’t already, it’s clear the country cannot tolerate his presence in the White House, or even in politics, after what we learned today.

1.    The Narrative

According to Hutchinson, Trump was advised early on the morning of January 6 that there were armed people in the crowd. Let’s not over play this one – the entire crowd wasn’t armed to its teeth, but there were reports of weapons, including AR-15’s.

Hutchinson says Trump was disappointed with the size of the crowd for his speech on the Ellipse (nothing new there). After being advised it was because armed folks in the crowd didn’t want to go through the magnetometers and give up their weapons, Trump demanded the security devices be removed so people would make their way onto the Ellipse. Trump told Secret Service agents he didn’t care if they were armed because they weren’t there to harm him.

In his speech, Trump called on the crowd to fight for him — Fight for me. Fight for what we're doing. Fight for the movement.

He did that knowing they were armed. And then he pointed them towards the Capitol and launched them at it. Coincidentally, the White House counsel didn’t want Trump to use the language about fighting for him and was concerned it could be viewed as evidence of criminality. We don’t know if they conveyed that to Trump himself or just his speech writers, but either way, the lawyers thought the language was problematic. And Trump used it.

Hutchinson’s testimony was full of details that are not good for Trump. They require more development, but the bottom line is, this was a damaging day for the former president. Hutchinson gives the first authoritative account of what was going on inside of the White House on the 6th and the timeline will only advance the understanding of what Trump knew or was aware of when he took certain actions, like scapegoating his Vice President with the mob.

2.    The Witness

Hutchinson is the kind of witness jurors usually like. Her testimony is credible, in part because she was so clearly in Trump’s camp and has so much to lose by testifying. And she peppered her testimony with the kind of details people don’t usually make up, like the hamburger and ketchup on the dining room wall when the president was upset by his attorney general’s press conference — the one where Bill Barr told an AP reporter the election wasn’t tainted by fraud.

A dispute emerged about Hutchinson’s testimony after it ended. She had discussed being told, by the head of Trump’s Secret Service detail and a Secret Service agent who’d taken a leave of absence from the Service to take a position as a political appointee in the White House, that Trump was so angry when he was told he couldn’t accompany the crowd to the Capitol that he grabbed for the wheel of the Suburban he was traveling in and lunged for the neck of the agent in charge of his detail. Hutchinson didn’t testify to the alleged assault itself, but to being told about it. And Hutchinson was testifying under oath. Unless agents come forward and deny her testimony under oath, it’s hard to credit that there’s a legitimate dispute here. But if they do, her credibility could be up for grabs if they credibly refute her testimony.

Her story is full of details that would be weirdly specific for a witness to make up and you’d expect committee members to have vetted her story in advance of presenting her in public. But stranger things have happened.

3.    Witness Intimidation

Why the rush to do this hearing? One possible explanation is concerns about witness tampering.

At the end of the hearing, Liz Cheney mentioned that the committee routinely asks witnesses if anyone has tried to influence their testimony. And wow, have they gotten some answers.

We don’t know who these witnesses were or who tried to influence them. That said, the committee was clearly putting whoever it is on notice that the gig is up. And putting DOJ on notice they have some investigating to do.

Witness intimidation is a serious federal crime. If there is compelling evidence someone has threatened or tried to intimidate Cassidy Hutchinson, I'd expect to see DOJ go from 0 to 90, because witness intimidate is a crime that undermines the ability of the criminal justice system to function. The most likely relevant crime is 18 U.S.C. 1512, which applies to efforts to hinder, delay, prevent, etc., a witness from testifying before Congress. If you look at the statute, you’ll see that it covers lots of different real estate. It’s broad and designed to reach all of the options from violence to corrupt persuasion. Lots of “ifs” here, but if someone is trying to intimidate Cassidy Hutchinson or other witnesses, this could get traction fast.

***

People who still haven’t testified and should: Mike Pence, Mark Meadows, Pat Cipollone, Jim Jordan and on and on. It’s a long list. At some point, prosecutors have to consider whether witnesses who don’t cooperate are defense witnesses and what they might have to offer that would affect the prosecutions case.

Finally, there’s this.  Not the main show, but shocking. Trump consistently surrounded himself with the worst people. We deserve better in government. There’s no need to coddle these people. They were inept. They were corrupt. It’s up to us to make sure they don’t come back.

We’re in this together.

Joyce